The Outdoor Living Digest

Ask most people to picture a pergola and they’ll describe the same scene: a backyard patio, a dining table underneath, evening light filtering through the beams. It’s a lovely image, and there’s a reason it’s the default. But it’s only one option out of many. We’ve spent years installing louvered pergolas, retractable models, and custom...

Hurricane season tends to sneak up on people. The forecast looks fine one day, and then a Category 3 is heading for the coastline with 48 hours to go. That’s usually when the phone starts ringing. Not because folks didn’t know the season was coming, but because a real storm on the map has a...

Ask any business owner in a hurricane zone how they feel come June, and you’ll get some version of the same knot-in-the-stomach answer. Are we ready? We’ve spent enough seasons around commercial properties to know that the buildings that come through best aren’t the lucky ones. They’re the prepared ones. And more often than not,...

Every hurricane season brings the same nagging question: how do you keep your home safe without pouring money into permanent reinforcements? Hurricane screens are one solution many homeowners land on. Like hurricane resistant pergolas in Miami, FL, they’ve picked up a lot of attention lately. We hear plenty of questions about them at Smart Shade...

Hurricane season has a way of sneaking up on people. Every year, homeowners in storm-prone areas rush to get ready, and a good number of them leave it far too late. When a storm finally rolls through, the homes that come out okay usually belong to people who did the work early. A little preparation...

The short answer is yes, you can still install them – and putting it off any longer is a gamble you don’t want to take. A lot of homeowners figure that if they didn’t prepare before the season started, the moment has passed. We hear it constantly at Smart Shade Structures. But that thinking gets...